Icelandic is at risk of becoming an extinct language because it's too complicated for computers

Downtown
Reykjavik sits in the afternoon light following the government
shake-up in the wake of the Panama Papers crisis on April 5, 2016
in Reykjavik, Iceland.Getty
Images/Spencer Platt

REYKJAVIK, Iceland (AP) — When an Icelander arrives at an office
building and sees "Solarfri" posted, they need no further
explanation for the empty premises: The word means "when staff
get an unexpected afternoon off to enjoy good weather."

The people of this rugged North Atlantic island settled by
Norsemen some 1,100 years ago have a unique dialect of Old Norse
that has adapted to life at the edge of the Artic.

Hundslappadrifa, for example, means "heavy snowfall with large
flakes occurring in calm wind."

But the revered Icelandic language, seen by many as a source of
identity and pride, is being undermined by the widespread use of
English, both for mass tourism and in the voice-controlled
artificial intelligence devices coming into vogue.

Linguistics experts, studying the future of a language spoken by
fewer than 400,000 people in an increasingly globalized world,
wonder if this is the beginning of the end for the Icelandic
tongue.

Former President Vigdis Finnbogadottir told The Associated Press
that Iceland must take steps to protect its language. She is
particularly concerned that programs be developed so the language
can be easily used in digital technology.

"Otherwise, Icelandic will end in the Latin bin," she warned.

Teachers are already sensing a change among students in the scope
of their Icelandic vocabulary and reading comprehension.

Anna Jonsdottir, a teaching consultant, said she often hears
teenagers speak English among themselves when she visits schools
in Reykjavik, the capital.

She said 15-year-old students are no longer assigned a volume
from the Sagas of Icelanders, the medieval literature chronicling
the early settlers of Iceland. Icelanders have long prided
themselves of being able to fluently read the epic tales
originally penned on calfskin.

Most high schools are also waiting until senior year to read
author Halldor Laxness, the 1955 winner of the Nobel Prize in
literature, who rests in a small cemetery near his farm in West
Iceland.

A number of factors combine to make the future of the Icelandic
language uncertain. Tourism has exploded in recent years,
becoming the country's single biggest employer, and analysts at
Arion Bank say one in two new jobs is being filled by foreign
labor.

That is increasing the use of English as a universal communicator
and diminishing the role of Icelandic, experts say.

"The less useful Icelandic becomes in people's daily life, the
closer we as a nation get to the threshold of giving up its use,"
said Eirikur Rognvaldsson, a language professor at the University
of Iceland.

He has embarked on a three-year study of 5,000 people that will
be the largest inquiry ever into the use of the language.

"Preliminary studies suggest children at their first-language
acquisition are increasingly not exposed to enough Icelandic to
foster a strong base for later years," he said.

Concerns for the Icelandic language are by no means new. In the
19th century, when its vocabulary and syntax were heavily
influenced by Danish, independence movements fought to revive
Icelandic as the common tongue, central to the claim that
Icelanders were a nation.

Since Iceland became fully independent from Denmark in 1944, its
presidents have long championed the need to protect the language.

Asgeir Jonsson, an economics professor at the University of
Iceland, said without a unique language Iceland could experience
a brain drain, particularly among certain professions.

"A British town with a population the size of Iceland has far
fewer scientists and artists, for example," he said. "They've
simply moved to the metropolis."

The problem is compounded because many new computer devices are
designed to recognize English but they do not understand
Icelandic.

"Not being able to speak Icelandic to voice-activated fridges,
interactive robots and similar devices would be yet another lost
field," Jonsson said.

Icelandic ranks among the weakest and least-supported language in
terms of digital technology — along with Irish Gaelic, Latvian,
Maltese and Lithuanian — according to a report by the
Multilingual Europe Technology Alliance assessing 30 European
languages.

Iceland's Ministry of Education estimates about 1 billion
Icelandic krona, or $8.8 million, is needed for seed funding for
an open-access database to help tech developers adapt Icelandic
as a language option.

Svandis Svavarsdottir, a member of Iceland's parliament for the
Left-Green Movement, said the government should not be weighing
costs when the nation's cultural heritage is at stake.

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Icelandic is at risk of becoming an extinct language because it's too complicated for computers

REYKJAVIK, Iceland (AP) — When an Icelander arrives at an office building and sees "Solarfri" posted, they need no further explanation for the empty premises: The word means "when staff get an unexpected afternoon off to enjoy good weather."